Duck... duck... GO! Duckduckgo.com the next google?

Wow, I love finding big bad tools to change how I work, and I’m always up for a new search engine. Will it be a new kid on the block or doomed to be the next Infoseek?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present… duckduckgo.com!

I was tipped off by a post at Linux.com (give credit where credit is due) and decided to give it a whirl.

How it works

Duckduckgo is an accumulating search that utilizes results like the major search engines, but has more of a bing feel as far as lack of clutter and less ads. They claim not to track and store personal information, and, I like this, they specify official sites. Good news if you’re trying to find Katy Perry’s official site and keep getting a fan page.

So to start off, I decided to test it with a search of Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules album. So I put in “Black Sabbath Mob Rules” without punctuation.

(For the sake of space and scope of the images below, you can click the tinypic hotlink to see the full pic *OR* play along at home; open up a new browser window/tab and compare the results yourself.)

First response: WOW. This might be the Axl Rose driving Optimus Prime experience I’ve been looking for…

For comparison, Google gives me this:

Let’s make is real simple:
1) Google has given me six image results for the same album cover. Useful. Not.
2) Is that a result for CDUniverse.com? Boy, I love time travel, but not in my search results. Hello 2000!
3) I’m not a fan of giving me a link to, for example, Black Sabbath’s page and another link right below with a link to a subpage of the same page. That’s wasted search result space.
4) I like having one video link; if I want more youtube results, I would go to youtube to search, not rely on google’s results.

For the bells and whistles of  Duckduckgo, there is a basic search filter for all sites, shopping, or “mostly info”. It’s one thing to give us filters and custom searches, but the simplicity of this for the everyday user is great. I know when I’m looking for information on Black Sabbath vs looking for a vinyl copy in near mint condition for purchase. And if you’ve ever used Google for shopping, you know it’s about as useful as a monkey typing into ebay, and half the stores give me the heebie jeebies.  Plus, down the right side of the page, you can go to your favorite site/specific site if you want to skip right to, say, searching Twitter or Amazon. Again, much simpler than cluttering your results query with extra hits.  Like those Bing commercials, Duckduckgo is a decision engine that simplifies the entire search experience.

So if you like your searches simple, and let’s face it, most of our day-to-day stuff is looking for easy things, not taking Nicholas Cage on a hunt for National Treasure, then I give two big jackalope horns up to Duckduckgo.com!

*UPDATE* Oh MAN!!!!! I did a search for UBUNTU  and it asks me right up top, wikipedia style, what type of search I intended! Intuitive. Brilliant.

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